There are not many pictures from my childhood. I recently found out that one of the Christmas cards my family sent which included photos of the four children, actually had two of my sister and none of me, because they had not taken any of the baby yet. Oh well. I would not have known myself, not having seen many. 

 

It seems inevitable that we will become unrecognizable to ourselves at some point. Our jobs evolve, health falters, skin gets flabby. Certainly the oldest child in many families with more than the median number of kids has opinions about how his or her parents have morphed, usually not for the better, by the time the youngest sibling hits puberty. I know we did. Anger either got depleted in those first fifteen years, or I learned a better way to parent. I have no recollection of raising my voice to the last four kids, with the exception of Ben. I suppose I could apologize to the first batch, but maybe it would stir up bad karma. It also could be argued that I am less fun than I was in my twenties. The older set had a mom who would push them on the swings, and hike in Yosemite. The younger half did not. 

 

Humans do not hold a monopoly on change. Tadpoles make a dramatic transformation into frogs, and anyone who has seen a newborn polar bear or joey will attest to their dissimilarity to their full grown counterparts. 

 

I suppose since there can only be one of me at the end of the day, it behooves me to shed the more primitive characteristics, and slide into a version I would like to befriend.